Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Dmae Roberts features two contemporary shows that are adapted from classical works. She talks with Kate Belden of Polymath Art Theatre and their adaption of Macbeth, a Dark Retelling and Jeffrey Puukka who adapted and directs Women of Troy for Play On Words. We’ll hear about the process of making classical works responsive to today. Both shows features domestic abuse and a violence in society.

Synopsis: An uncomfortable look into the Macbeth story with a stark examination of domestic abuse and the culture that supports it. In a world not too unfamiliar with our own, Lady Macbeth strives to make the best of her unfortunate position, a woman locked in a society that has no sympathy for the abuse she suffers. Driven to violence by her unyielding circumstances, she drives her husband to high treason and brings wide spread slaughter to all the land. Only an unlikely hero can salvage what’s left after men have brought about the means for their own destruction.
Trigger Warning: This production will contain triggers regarding Domestic Abuse and Violence.

Synopsis: In the dead of night, Troy was massacred. By morning, all men are dead, and the capital burns. The women and children left alive try to cope with the new ‘normal’. The occupying Greek power grapples with the aftershocks of a war that has lasted ten years. Since it premiered in 415 BCE, Euripides’ masterwork has been celebrated as a titan of world literature, and a play of surpassing power and humanitarian worth. This is not the museum’s Greek Play. PoW’s bold new version is not the museum’s Greek play. POW’s contemporary retelling pays homage to civilian victims of conflict, and honors the struggle individual soldiers endure to keep light in their hearts during and after duty.